Haider Ackermann knows his priorities: clothes before celebrities

The French designer and Antwerp art academy dropout sits down with Vogue

I arrive soaking wet at Haider Ackermann’s unmarked studio in the 8th Arrondissement of Paris. The space is well-lit, full of natural light and devoid of any clutter. In the corner, the designer sits by the window posing for portraits, while his team eats lunch at a communal table in the back. As the rain dies down, the sun’s rays shine through a door left half-opened, leading to a room full of garment rails and shoes left on tabletops—a glimpse of what he might show come Saturday morning.

Today, Ackermann is in many ways part of fashion’s fading gentry. He is a highly skilled women’s tailor who has shunned logophilia, a visionary who finds inspiration from the streets—as evident in his bestselling velvet sweats and bomber jackets worn by the likes of Kanye West and ASAP Rocky—but one who’s been careful not to succumb to the hype of streetwear. Having enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where the likes of Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela were educated, Ackermann left without completing his degree, interning with John Galliano at Dior before establishing his own label.

It’s a rare and impressive thing for a designer to be a fixture at both Paris Fashion Week and its counterpart for men. Earlier in his career, Karl Lagerfeld heralded Ackermann as a talent worthy of succeeding him at Chanel. But these days, his eponymous label is just as well known for its menswear as its womenswear. In 2016, he was appointed creative director of Berluti, the only men’s-focussed luxury brand under the LVMH umbrella, and with all the attention surrounding Berluti’s renaissance, it might be easy to forget that when Ackermann first arrived onto the scene at the turn of the millennium, it was actually for his womenswear. The earlier collections, of jersey wrap-over dresses, harem pants and immaculately cut tailoring, coloured with a polished palette of blues, blacks and greys, were shown on the Parisian catwalks to critical acclaim. The man, he reminds me, arrived much later. In fact, it would take nearly a decade for the designer to show a menswear collection on the runway, at Pitti Uomo, the Florentine trade show, in June 2010 for spring/summer 2011.

“Suddenly, men appeared, because I was wondering, who was the man behind an Ackermann woman?” The Bohemian collection he exhibited at Pitti featured layered silk tops alongside opulent brocades fit for a Silk Road merchant. According to Ackermann, the introduction of men’s garments to complement the womenswear was what he describes as a “mental seduction.” He had hoped to give more attitude to the woman through the man by her side. “It was an exercise of style, a trying-out.” But it would only be temporary. “Then we stopped for a few seasons because I was absolutely was not ready for it.” In 2013, however, it would return for good. And the rest, as they say, is history.

After so many years in the industry, Ackermann has experienced the evolution of luxury fashion first hand. But never mind the ugly chunky dad shoes or the slouching hoodies repeatedly plastered with a brand’s name.“Do you know how many sneakers they’re selling in the world? It’s insane,” he raises his voice slightly. To this day, Ackermann still sees himself as a purveyor of stories and dreams, not only clothes. “You just have to think about the story you like to tell,” he continues. For his spring/summer 2018 womenswear collection, the designer sent out asymmetrically cut golden blazers that appeared to crumble on one side, like shifting tectonic plates, alongside white jackets cut with red revers like delicious velvet cake. “Commercially, it’s another step that falls behind. We are faced with reality enough: the designs that I have made me travel with my mind, and I like that—I think that’s luxury.”

At his Autumn/Winter 2018 men’s show this season, I spotted the likes of R&B star Miguel and Gabriel-Kane – a front row fixture and son of actor Daniel Day-Lewis—sitting by the runway attentively. Although his clothes have been worn by a cast of A-listers over the years, including Tilda Swinton and now Timothée Chalamet, Ackermann assures me he isn’t interested in playing the game of celebrities. “One has to be careful because it’s uninteresting to read articles where they first talk about celebrities, and then the clothes,” he warns me. “The first row is taking more attention than the clothes on the catwalk nowadays.” It’s an epidemic that the designer attributes to social media.

Ackermann, like 800 million others around the globe, is on Instagram. So he’s aware of the witch hunts and the culture of calling-out that the platform fosters. “I think due to social media, and everything that happens nowadays, everyone has an opinion,” he says. “But one should always have an opinion that is loaded with knowledge and history.” I ask if he’s referring to any accounts in particular. “No, I can’t,” he replies, laughing. “Nowadays, whether it’s in fashion or in general, everyone can throw their garbage out there, accusing anyone and everyone.” He continues: “It’s this public scenery, where you burn witches in the fire—I find it too vulgar for words.”

For so many of us who have succumbed to the pressures of documenting our waking moments , the constant scrolling through social media has become less entertainment and more of an inevitable chore—a Sisyphean task for the modern individual, the price we pay for living in the 21st century. “My life is so uninteresting to be shared, and I don’t see why someone is interested in how I wake up in the morning,” Ackermann says. “That’s not my job; my job is to make nice clothes, to search for a type of beauty—if a man or a woman feel attractive in it then I did my job.”